And surely this may be effected with proper exertions.

Or what possibility was there of keeping the army together, if the war had continued, when the victualls, clothing, and other expenses of it were to have been added?
Another thing, Sir, (as I mean to be frank and free in my communications on this subject,) I will not conceal from you--it is the dissimilarity in the payments to men in Civil and Military life.

The first receive everything--the others get nothing but bare subsistence--they ask what this is owing to?
and reasons have been assigned, which, say they, amount to this--that men in Civil life have stronger passions and better pretensions to indulge them, or less virtue and regard for their Country than us,--otherwise, as we are all contending for the same prize and equally interested in the attainment of it, why do we not bear the burthen equally ?[1] [Footnote 1: Ford, X, 203.] The army was indeed the incubus of the Americans.

They could not fight the war without it, but they had never succeeded in mastering the difficulties of maintaining and strengthening it.

The system of a standing army was of course not to be thought of, and the uncertain recruits who took its place were mostly undisciplined and unreliable.
When the exigencies became pressing, a new method was resorted to, and then the usual erosion of life in the field, the losses by casualties and sickness, caused the numbers to dwindle.